UK ad-slingers spent TWICE as much smearing sales-bluster on mobes in 2012

The amount of cash splurged on mobile advertising in Blighty more than doubled last year to £526m, as the global recession continues to have little effect on the eagerness of marketers to fill folks' every screen with ads.

According to beancounters at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, who totted up the numbers for the Internet Advertising Bureau, all digital advertising rose 12.5 per cent to a record high of £5.42bn, while mobile spending reached over half a billion pounds from £203.2m in 2011.

“Mobile has reached this milestone because marketers are becoming more attuned to the 'always on' nature of consumers who expect to engage with content wherever they are. Consequently, advertisers are increasingly buying integrated campaigns across online and mobile rather than regarding mobile as an afterthought,” Tim Elkington, Director of Research & Strategy at the Internet Advertising Bureau, said in a canned statement.

“There’s simply so much buzz around mobile. In the last six months, 20 more of the UK’s top 100 advertisers have produced mobile-optimised websites; 4G mobile ultra-broadband is enabling a new era of richer content consumption and tablets are being predicted to outsell PCs in 2013. This will help maintain mobile’s significant momentum in attracting both consumer attention and advertising pounds.”

Mobile is now worth nearly 10 per cent of all digital advertising spend in the UK, compared to just 1.1 per cent in 2009, while general digital advertising continues to line the pockets of the likes of Google and Facebook.

Out of the sizeable general ad binge, video promotion grew 46 per cent to £160m, while social media advertising was up 24 per cent to £328.4m.

Consumer goods makers as a group overtook the finance sector as the biggest customer for digital display advertising, but entertainment and media are the lavish spenders in mobile display, accounting for 16 per cent of the market. ®